Tichi Wilkerson Kassel

Tichi Wilkerson Kassel (May 10, 1926 – March 8, 2004) was an American film personality and the publisher of The Hollywood Reporter. She established the Women in Film organization, the Key Art and Marketing Concepts awards, and several scholarships for film students.

Biography Kassel was born Beatrice Ruby Noble in Los Angeles on May 10, 1926. She was raised in Mexico City and returned to Los Angeles as a teenager. Tichi's mother was a maid for William "Billy" Wilkerson, founder, publisher and editor of The Hollywood Reporter newspaper. Wilkerson courted Tichi and they were married on February 23, 1951, in Phoenix, Arizona; he was in his 60s and she was 25. Soon after their marriage, she started to work at the trade paper. When Wilkerson died in 1962, she took over as the paper's second editor and publisher.

After Wilkerson's death, she married realtor William Miles. The couple divorced in 1982, and in 1983 she married Arthur Kassel.

In 1971, Wilkerson Kassel started the Key Art Awards, which annually honor outstanding achievement in motion picture and TV advertising and promotion; and the Marketing Concepts Awards, which offers recognition and cash rewards to motion picture exhibitors who develop and originate innovative and effective marketing campaigns.

Wilkerson Kassel started the Wilkerson Foundation, She sold the paper on April 11, 1988, to trade publishers BPI for $26.7 million.

In 1993 Women's Image Network Awards presented Tichi with its inaugural Lifetime Achievement tribute.

In 2002, Tichi and her husband Arthur Kassel founded the Tichi Wilkerson Kassel Parkinson's Foundation to raise money for research.

Death On March 8, 2004, aged 77, Tichi Wilkerson Kassel died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after complications from intestinal surgery. She later married Arthur Kassel, a gun enthusiast and co-founder of the Beverly Hills Gun Club.